How to Get the Most Out Of Your Socio-Demographics Surveys

It’s important to know who you are trying to reach. That is why socio-demographics surveys are so valuable. They help determine your audience’s socio-economic status, age, gender, and other demographics. These surveys have become mandatory for many companies to better understand their target market and what they want from them. But socio-demographic surveys don’t work if they are not adequately utilized! Find out how to get the most out of your socio-demographics survey below!

What are Socio-Demographic Surveys?

Socio-demographic surveys help businesses and marketers determine socio-economic status, age range, gender, family size, and other demographics.

Why Socio-Demographics Surveys?

Knowing your socio-demographic information can be very beneficial to your market research efforts. It will allow you to make more informed decisions about the direction of future marketing campaigns and how they should be targeted.

Socio-demographic surveys work for organizations that want to develop public policy or engage in advocacy work on behalf of their audience/constituents. Knowing the socio-economic background within an organization’s target population would offer insights into whether those programs work effectively. The demographic data collected from these surveys can be beneficial in a variety of ways! Learn more about how to conduct socio-demographics surveys for your business.

Best Practices in Socio-demographic Surveys

When creating socio-demographic surveys, avoid using questions with leading statements. These types of questions will ‘telegraph’ your intentions and can lead people to answer according to what they think you want them to say rather than how they feel about the topic at hand. 

In other words, this makes it easier for participants to guess what answers are being sought after by whom. This is why socio-demographic survey best practice includes having open-ended questions that encourage opinions from those surveyed instead of just yes or no responses. The key here is that these surveys should provide insight into your target market instead of who you might think they are or who you might want them to be.

How To Increase Responses?

For socio-demographic surveys, the best practice is to include an incentive. People always appreciate being given something for their time. So offering them some type of incentive will surely increase response rates – even if it’s just a simple thank you or acknowledgement letter afterward. 

Other ways of increasing socio-demographics survey responses include sending out reminders/nudges before data collection begins and using multiple modes of contact. If all else fails, sending out a big fat incentive will always work!

What Not to Do With Your Survey?

Do not have participants complete your survey on a public computer, such as in an internet café. The reasoning for this is simple; your results accuracy is compromised due to the risk for social desirability bias. Also, avoid sending out long socio-demographic surveys that may intimidate your target market into not wanting to complete it. The shorter the socio-demographic poll, the greater the chance of people completing it!

Now that you have this information, you can get the most out of your socio-demographics survey. Keep in mind the power of incentives and question structure as you prepare your survey. They might be what determines your success or failure!